Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/heart-centered-leadership/5022648/
Becoming a heart-centered leader is an inside job, and it’s not for the faint-of-heart. It’s a process of getting to know and accept ourselves so well that nothing outside of us feels threatening anymore. It’s making peace with the fears we find in our heart when we get really honest. The classic children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit (Williams, 1958), contains a famous paragraph that describes the process perfectly:
You become. It takes a long time…. Generally by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.
Heart-centered leaders no longer try to cover up their “Realness” for fear of what others will think. They learn to stop judging any parts of themselves as ‘ugly.’ They move to a place of greater acceptance and love for themselves first, and then for everyone else in their lives.
That all sounds good, but, wow, it’s not easy. It’s a process, not an event.
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